Though snowy egrets rarely visit southwestern Pennsylvania, they’re one of my favorite birds.  They’re very photogenic and so self-absorbed that they usually don’t notice people near them.  I see them up close in Florida.  Kim Steininger photographed this one at Bombay Hook, Delaware.

When I see snowy egrets I think of their mispronounced name – “No Regrets” – which I learned from Larry Levis’ poem, Slow Child with a Book of Birds.  The poem is set in winter.  Here’s the excerpt:
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“Yesterday, the slow child on the bus, talkative
Amidst the fully evolved quiet of those
Around us muffled in their parkas, was showing me
A Snowy Egret in the book he carried,
“No Regrets,” he said, pointing to its eyes,
To a brassy, unassailable candor in them.
“No Regrets,” he said again, for the pleasure
Of it, & smiled, absorbed in it,”

— from Slow Child with a Book of Birds by Larry Levis,
The Widening Spell of the Leaves, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.
Used by permission of the publisher.

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Yes, this bird has that look on his face.  No regrets, indeed!

(photo by Kim Steininger)